Jo sat up very straight in the exact centre of the bed, smoothing down the sheets coquettishly, like a queen waiting to receive tribute.
‘Yes.’ He looked over his shoulder again, and hitched his chair farther forward, holding on to the bed rail. ‘I thought I’d better come and tell you, because you are one of the gang, aren’t you? We’re going in to-night? He hissed it at her, his round, healthy face alight with excitement.
‘You never!’ Jo’s eyes snapped wide open as she looked up.
‘Yes we are. We must, you see. We – ’ He broke off and sat back as Mrs Abinger came in with a plate and glass.
‘Oh I say, thanks awfully.’ He took them and sat holding them awkwardly, while she lingered, enjoying the scene. Perhaps she could ask all the Moores up to tea, now that Billy had been. She would make meringues, and there were those new fancy chocolate biscuits that she kept for special customers. She might even arrive at having Mrs Moore to tea one day when George was sure to be out.
‘There’s plenty more cake,’ she said. ‘Just give me a call. Why, what’s the matter with you, Jo? You look as if you’d seen a ghost. Do you want a slice of cake?’ Jo did not answer.
‘Do you want some cake, I said. Where’s your tongue?’
‘No, Mum,’ said Jo, still staring at Billy.
‘No, thank you. Good gracious, whatever will Billy think of you? Now I’ll leave you two to have a nice little chat.’ She thought perhaps Billy might be shy of eating in front of her.
When she had gone, he put the glass on the floor, and eating the cake rapidly without tasting it, said: ‘Yes, we’re going in to-night. Isn’t it spiffing? We’ve knocked out tons of bricks, and there’s loads of room to get through. I’ve been right up to the grating twice. I didn’t mind a bit. Norman’s written a warning letter to his father, in thieves’ code, if you know what that is.’ He did not know himself, but luckily she did not ask.
‘You’re never going without me?’ she asked incredulously.
‘Well, can’t you come? You don’t look very ill.’
‘Mum won’t let me go out.’
‘Don’t tell her then. Sneak out when she’s not there.’
‘I can’t,’ she wailed. ‘You don’t understand. She’s always there.’
‘It’s a bally swizz for you, but never mind. We’ll tell you all about it after.’
‘You mustn’t go. You shan’t. Not without me. ‘Tain’t fair. Who was it went up the drain first? You wouldn’t never have known Art and Norm if it hadn’t have been for me.’
‘I’d have got to know them, I expect,’ he said airily. ‘I say, it’s going to be super fun to-night. Norm and I are going up first. I’ve made a cosh, and Wilf’s taking his jack knife. I say we ought to wear masks, like highwaymen – ’ He burbled on, obtusely elated.
She hated him. ‘If you go without me, you’re a mucking swine,’ she said, using one of the Goldners’ milder expressions.
‘We must,’ he said. ‘Everything’s ready. We can’t wait, because it’s St Leger day on Wednesday. Besides, my father’s coming on leave this week, and that means we can’t go out on our own so much, because he’s always wanting us to play something with him.’
Mrs Abinger, unable to keep away, came back to dote like Boots at the Holly Tree Inn on what she was beginning to think of as a childhood romance. ‘Whatever’s the matter, Jo?’ she asked in surprise. ‘You’re never crying?’
‘Mum!’ Jo rubbed the sheet into her eyes. ‘I don’t feel well.’
‘What a shame just when Billy’s here. It’s her head, you know,’ she told Billy. ‘She gets these pains, and I daresay the excitement of you coming brought it on.’
‘I’m going now anyway,’ he said, getting up.
‘Perhaps it would be best, and you can come back another time when she’s feeling brighter. I’ll just go through and show you the way out.’ She hurried back into the sitting-room to put the lid on her mending basket, in case Billy should tell his mother that he had seen Mr Abinger’s pants.
‘Good-bye, Josie,’ said Billy. ‘Wish us luck.’
She bit the sheet and looked at him sullenly over it, her eyes glazed with furious tears. ‘I hates you,’ she muttered through the sheet. ‘I hates the lot of you. I’ll get even with you, see if I don’t.’
‘Don’t be an ass,’ he said. ‘Fortunes of war.’ This was what his father told him when he got a disappointment. It consoled Josephine no more than it ever did Billy.
‘Go away!’ she howled, and slumped down in the bed, drawing the clothes over her head.
‘I am,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I wish I hadn’t come.’ He did not quite know why he had come. He had been bursting to tell someone, and he had suddenly been seized by a desire to see Jo. He had run down the Portobello Road on an impulse, without thinking why.
He went out through the sitting-room, where Mr Abinger looked up, sniffed at him, and went on reading the paper. Billy did not like the stuffy smell of the room. He had never liked Mr Abinger, and he escaped quickly, glad to be out and heading for the evening’s adventure.
When George had consulted his watch, settled his hat in the dead centre of his box-like skull and gone to Avondale Park, Mrs Abinger had a look at the evening paper. Most evenings, she never got a chance at it until last thing, for even when he was not reading it, George carried it about on his person, folded up small and thick at the piece he was going to read next.
Glancing at the photograph page first, her eye was riveted. Six years rolled away and she was in the train with Dot in that navy frock coat of hers that she was still wearing, poor soul, for all she tried to disguise it with new buttons. The man in this picture, darkened and slightly blurred by the newsprint, was the fair young man in the elegant uniform who had sat opposite them, reading the Tatler and swinging a polished toe.
She had often caught herself wondering what had become of Sir Rodney Cope, but she put it from her, because all that was finished and done with, now that Jo was legally hers. It made her proud sometimes to toy with the idea that Josephine might be Joy Stretton, and lately, since Jo had gone about so much with the Moores as naturally as if she was a lady born, Mrs Abinger could not help seeing her, not as the baby of the church porch, but as the baby in the Moses basket, lined with quilted pink muslin, the baby with the elegant uncle.
And now, here he was. She peered at the photograph, trying to see a family likeness.
‘Racing at Doncaster,’ the caption said. ‘The Hon. Lydia Manning-Day with Sir Rodney Cope in the paddock.’ His girl friend, like as not. Trust him to pick himself a title. He wore a bowler hat, check suit, and racing glasses, but looked just the same as he had in uniform, six years ago, as if everything were a bit too much for him. He was looking down at his race card in the same perplexed way as he had once looked down at the crying baby. The Hon. Lydia, in tweeds and a hat like a pudding basin, was as tall as he, and looked tougher. He still carried a stick. For smartness, Mrs Abinger wondered, or was he still suffering with his wound, poor thing?
She picked up the paper and carried it into Jo’s bedroom. Jo, who had been brooding under the bedclothes, sat up when she heard her mother come in. She did not want her to think she was ill and fuss over her. She wanted to be left alone to chew her nails and think dark thoughts.
‘Look at this picture Mum’s found,’ said Mrs Abinger. ‘A gentleman I used to know. Don’t you think he looks nice?’ She laid the paper across the sheet. Vaguely, she thought that some instinct in Jo might respond; that she would take a liking to the photograph, as children took to some pictures in books and ignored others. ‘Look, he’s at the races at Doncaster. Uncle Reg went there once.’
Doncaster! The name was salt rubbed into Jo’s wounds. She turned her head away.
‘Don’t you want to see?’
Jo leaned her head back and closed her eyes. ‘I got a headache,’ she said wanly.
‘Yes, I know. It’s a shame. Have a little lay down now with the curtains drawn and
I’ll see if I can find you a treat for supper.’
‘Don’t want any.’ Jo stuck out her underlip. Mrs Abinger looked from the paper to the child and back again, trying to see a resemblance between the determined little face on the pillow and the irresolute, moon-like face under the bowler hat.
She sighed and folded the paper. Fancies got you nowhere. It was silly of her to keep on, when she had sworn to herself long ago that she would never worry about who Josephine might be. She was hers, that was all that really mattered.
The bed creaked as she sat down on it. Her weight tightened the sheet across Jo’s legs and the child wriggled to the other side, pressing her shoulder against the wall. Mrs Abinger leaned across. ‘Give us a cuddle then.’
‘Don’t, Mum.’ Jo went stiff. Were children like this sometimes with their real mothers? When she was tiny, Jo had turned to her instinctively as if they were linked by blood. Adoption had seemed to make no difference then. But as she grew older and more independent, it seemed sometimes almost as if she knew, although not a whisper of it had ever been told her.
‘Do you love Mum?’ She could not help asking it.
Josephine pouted and jammed herself still closer against the wall.
Mrs Abinger put her hands on her knees and pushed herself up from the low bed. ‘Proper little misery, aren’t you? You didn’t want Billy to go, is that it?’
‘It ain’t!’
‘Isn’t,’ corrected Mrs Abinger. Josephine’s vehemence made her think she had touched on the truth. She pounced gladly on something that lay on the end of the bed. ‘Well there now,’ she cried. ‘Boys are alike all the world over. Left his cap behind. That’s his school cap, I suppose.’ She looked inside it at the name of the shop, and admired the crest. ‘He’ll be back for it soon, I daresay.’
She was pleased that Billy had left it, because now he would have to come back. She hung the cap on the bed post where Jo could see it.
When she had gone, Jo plunged to the end of the bed, snatched the cap, and going to the window, opened it and flung the cap out as hard as she could. It fell in the road and she waited, shivering in her nightdress in the evening chill, until a car drove by and she saw its wheels crush the cap. She was glad. She wished the cap were Billy.
The thought of them all going to the hut so gaily and selfishly without her made her boil with anger. She hated the lot of them. She would never play with them again; never have any fun any more. She wanted to scream and tear things up. She opened a drawer and scattered her socks and hair ribbons over the floor, but that did not relieve her feelings. She tried to tear the curtain, but it was tough and hurt her fingers as if it too was against her.
She saw a policeman crossing the end of the street and it made her hope that they would get caught and go to prison. Serve them right, and they needn’t think that she would dig a tunnel to get them out. She had half a mind to call out to the policeman and tell him to go and look in the hut on the edge of the Scrubs, but he was too far away.
‘Copper!’ she called. ‘Hi – Copper!’ But he did not hear.
She would tell the next one. Why shouldn’t she? It was a good idea. They had done the dirty on her; she had a right to do as much to them. The thought comforted her and soothed her temper. She’d show them they couldn’t do without her. She’d make them take notice of her.
She hung out of the window, but no policeman came. Presently with one foot on the pavement and one in the gutter, sneaking along looking this way and that like a weasel on the hunt, came Sidney. As he passed the Corner Stores, he turned his head and spat at it.
‘Ooh!’ called Jo. ‘I seen you! You wicked boy, I’ll tell my Mum.’
He looked up and came under the window to cock a snook at her. She cocked one back. Because he was neither Moore nor Goldner, she felt a wave of affection for him. ‘Come up and see us, Sid,’ she said.
‘Not me.’ He squinted up. ‘Your fancy friends can go up if they like, but not me. I seen that Billy Moore.’ Hardly a door could open in the Portobello Road without Sidney knowing who went in or out of it.
Jo had an idea. Sidney would do it. He didn’t like the Moores.
‘Do come up, Sid,’ she urged. ‘I want to tell you a secret. A good ’un. I got some fun for you. Do come. I got some choc up here.’
‘What sort?’ he asked cagily.
‘Whipped cream walnut and – wait a sec – ’ She ran to look under her pillow. ‘Half a cracknel bar.’
‘Honest?’
She drew her hand across her throat. ‘Cut me throat and hope to die and spit in the eye of ‘oo says I lie,’ she gabbled, and he sidestepped as she spat into the street.
‘I might,’ he said, and slipped away along the shop window and out of sight under the porch.
‘The boy’s lying, of course,’ said the assistant chief warder in a bored voice.
‘I’m not so sure, sir.’ Constable Roberts stood with his hand on Sidney’s collar, where he had kept it ever since the boy had sneaked up to him like a tipster and whispered his fantastic story out of the side of his mouth. He looked a slippery boy. A boy to ring doorbells and run; a boy to tip a policeman’s helmet over his eyes with a stick and vanish.
‘Of course he’s lying,’ repeated Mr Pennyfold. ‘Look at him.’ Sidney’s sidelong eyes slewed still further round until it seemed they would turn the corner and never come back. ‘Anyway, the story’s too good to be true. Things like that just don’t hap pen. Wish to God they did.’ It had been a long and deadly Sunday, the hours shuffling by as monotonously as the shuffle, shuffle of the men’s feet round the grey exercise yard.
‘But that’s just it, sir.’ Constable Roberts, who was young and keen, had hoped to make more sensation than this. ‘It’s such an oudandish story, I don’t see how he could have made it up. Truth stranger than fiction, you know, sir,’ he said briskly.
‘Are you trying to fool us, boy?’ Mr Pennyfold bent his prawnlike brows ferociously to where Sidney stood hang-dog.
‘It’s true, I tell you,’ muttered Sidney. ‘You go and see for yourself.’
‘And you say one of the gang told you? A squealer, eh? Who is it?’
‘Shan’t tell you,’ answered Sidney, more from secretiveness than loyalty. ‘Any case, I knew about it long ago. I know more than they think. I was biding me time.’
‘Hm.’ The warder considered him. What fun if it were true. Two hours more on duty; this was just the thing to liven up the evening.
‘There’s only one way to find out, sir,’ suggested Roberts. ‘Go and see.’
‘And have this young blighter laughing himself silly at our expense? I don’t believe a word of it.’ He resumed his bored voice and leaned back in his chair, making a little upward gesture with his hands as if chucking up the whole idea.
‘Let me go then, sir,’ urged the young policeman. ‘Just to make sure.’ He cleared his throat. ‘It’s my duty to investigate any report of misdoing, however irregular.’
‘I’m not going to miss the fun. I want to see these master criminals at work – if they are at work.’ Mr Pennyfold had boys of his own, who, perhaps through vicarious contact with crime, had a genius for intricate misdeeds. But they had never yet attempted anything on this scale. He wanted to see how it was done.
‘Tell you what.’ He lowered the front legs of his chair again decisively. ‘Hand this young scoundrel over to the duty room – no need to tell them anything about it. He can stay there while you and I take a little stroll round the premises, just to see that everything’s in order. I’m not expecting to find a thing. But – ’ he pounced forward suddenly at Sidney, who jumped, and threw up a defensive arm – ‘if we don’t find anything, boy, if you’re trying to play merry hell with His Majesty’s prison, I’ll take your scrofulous neck and – ’ He twisted his hands in the air, making a noise in the back of his throat like a tortured screw.
Sidney began to run at the nose. ‘You wait,’ he snivelled. ‘It’s true, all right, you see if it ain’t
. I ain’t done no wrong, mister.’
‘Take it away,’ said the assistant warder, ‘and throw it into irons in our deepest, darkest dungeon under the moat among the man-eating rats.’
‘You mean the duty room, I take it, sir,’ said Constable Roberts, with a hint of reproof. He had no children of his own and no imagination. He did not like facts tampered with.
‘Just so,’ said his superior solemnly. ‘Under the gate house among the man-eating card players.’
When Roberts came back, Mr Pennyfold stood up. ‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘Do I take handcuffs?’
‘Well, it’s customary, sir, isn’t it, when making an arrest?’
‘I suppose so. So long since I made one. You haven’t been in the Force long, have you? Made many arrests?’
‘None, sir,’ said Constable Roberts, blushing like a boy. ‘This will be my first.’
It was all over. It was finished. All Mrs Abinger’s hopes, plans, and pride crumbled about her ears in a dust heap of mortification.
But life had to go on. Money had to be earned. Ellie blundered miserably about the shop, trying to keep up appearances before customers, uncertain who knew and who did not. The Lane being what it was for gossip, probably everyone knew. Even those who did not made some remark – comic, or sympathetic or sarcastic – seemed to give her funny looks, as if they knew about Jo, as if they pitied her. Poor Ellie, they were thinking, so pleased with herself, believing that the Moores were taking Jo a step up in the world, when all the time Jo was dragging the Moores as low as they could go, right down to the Goldners, and crime.
Miss Loscoe knew about it, of course. She came into the shop more frequently, for a packet of salt here, a quarter of dry biscuits there, so as to be able to say: ‘And how is dear little Josephine?’ and see the heads turn to hear how Mrs Abinger would answer.
‘I came by the Moores’ house just now,’ Miss Loscoe would say. ‘They’ve got new curtains in the downstairs, or did you know? Ahem – pardon me, my tickle cough – of course, I daresay you wouldn’t know.’
Joy and Josephine Page 13